see more When East Meets West
By Hank F. Miller Jr.
Most people back in South Jersey probably never get the opportunity see the traditional sport of Japanese sumo at all, except maybe for funny TV skits mocking the over sized wrestlers. So I thought that it would be a good opportunity to write and let you all about the sport that I learned to enjoy in Japan over the years. I plan to write about sumo in several parts over the next few weeks.
On the surface sumo seemed to me to be the simplest of sports. When I first saw it, on a battered TV set at a Ramón noodle shop in Hiroshima nearly two decades ago, I didn\’t need a doctorate in Japanese studies to get the point:
Two big men collide in the center of a circle and the first to throw or push his opponent down or out wins. American football is one point of comparison with head banging guards etc, King-of-the-Mountain sort of thing. We presently have the opportunity to view the Aki Basho(Fall Tournament)held every September which started on last Sunday the 9th,the tournament will last for 15 days.
I also saw that sumo was different, very different. Professionals in other sports don\’t wear hairstyles, observe the customs and in general live lives of their 18th-century Predecessors either. The more I watched, the more and the more I learned, the more I realized that this 2,000-year-old sport wasn\’t so simple after all.
What were those brightly colored belts that made the wrestlers look like overweight and overstuffed Christmas presents? Who was the little man with the paddle, scampering about like a terrier at a fight between two bulls? I wouldn\’t have asked such questions of baseball or football I had grown up with them, watched them before I knew how to talk.
Sumo however is different. As I was interested and kept asking questions, I learned that it was a world with its own history, traditions, and mores. Unlike other professional athletes, who live as members of contemporary society and can disappear into its crowds, rikishi (which is what the wrestlers call themselves) remain apart enclosed in a feudal microcosm, of a vanished world. Their size, topknots, clothes, even the fragrant pomade called bintsuke that they use on their hair, makes them different and stands out wherever they go. To today\’s Japanese, rikishi are exotic beings and the ingly, even forbiddingly strange.
Thus sumo offers a window into Japan, since the opening of their country a century ago, the Japanese have adopted many Western traits. To those newcomers abroad, however, those ways can be a barrier to understanding; Japan\’s Westernization may not always be only on the surface, but it is seldom what it really seems.
Warm Regards from Kitakyushu City, Japan
To Be Continued Next Time:
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